The thoughts and musings of a man at the precipice of middle age, starting from his 50th birthday.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

The Best Weeks Are When Nothing Is on Fire

Some weeks are
just mellow without much happening. Aside from being very busy at work,
nothing really exciting happened outside the gate. There is a trend going on that I am grateful for and that is that the temperature is finally getting and
staying cooler. Most of the days now the temperature never gets above 105° or so,
at night we go all the way down to 70°. In the morning when I get up to walk
Falkor it's only about 75°, which is a very nice climate in which to do your
morning exercise.

Next
week, I will be going to Dubai to work at the naval port there where we have
some of our folks. I'm looking forward to it because I've only been to Dubai
once, and then it was only for a day. Whereas I don't intend on taking the $50
elevator ride up theBurj Khalifa, I do hope to be able to do
a little sightseeing so my missive will be filled with pictures.

On Friday, the doctor proclaimed my hand healed enough to take off
the splint. Yea! Except for some stiffness in the middle finger at the second
knuckle and occasional pain when I stress the hand, I appear to have come out
of this okay. I start physical therapy after I return from my trip next week.

The last
of my new employees has finally arrived. As long as no one else decides to take
another job or move on, personnel within my office should be stable for the
rest of my tour. This is a good thing, since the crew all seems to get
along well without much drama or interpersonal relationship issues. They
are also extremely good at their jobs, which will make my job much easier.

As I told
many folks, when I wrote my bookThree
Paperclips & a Grey ScarfI
was actually working on another novel but a different story kept playing
through my mind. The more I toyed around with the idea and the storyline the
harder it was for me to concentrate on the book I was supposed to be writing.
So I stopped writing the original book and concentrated on writing a story
that was torturing me.

Well,
once again I find myself being tortured by another tale other than the one I'm
supposed to be writing, so I have taken a pause once again and I am writing the
story that will not leave my mind. I'm wondering if maybe this is how my
writing style is going to be from now on. I sit down to write one thing, and
instead produce something totally different and unrelated.

As I
said, it was a slow week – – but sometimes those tend to work out just fine.

Some weeks you are the Tiger, other weeks the baby Antelope. Then some weeks, nobody gets eaten.